


King of hearts

by pharadoxly



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Complicated Relationships, I'll drown in kuroken someday I just know, M/M, angst if you squint a little bit, but slightly more complicated than that, in which kuroo is a writer and kenma's his unofficial muse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pharadoxly/pseuds/pharadoxly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life drags on as Kuroo Tetsurou drinks vodka in homeopathic doses and writes about Kenma in every story he sells, and Kenma keeps waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King of hearts

**Author's Note:**

> wait wait wait is this really the first hq fic i manage to upload here?  
> shit

A stranger of everyone is waiting on the bar stool, dark-wood and warmth in the same places as three minutes before, just like balloon-empty eyes. There's a flow of words underneath, strong and lighting-quick as the flood that spoiled the northern district eight months ago. _And one night does more than enough more often than not_ , B.K. said last night among the rapture of boys and girls.

Sunday evenings saturate with the pure bliss of waiting. Because authors can fly wherever they please but the story is, has always been, that they can't go wherever they wish and that's just sad, editors at parties tasting wine, stripped of their tie, if you know who to know, obvious. So to pull the strings you have to like a certain kind of life, of business, and keep from stepping on toes, on money, on rules, and Kenma isn't ready for selling to people what his soul isn't, mostly because people would buy it. He's the invisible card and he's not a real wild, or a jolly or a queen of hearts, for the record, so no. He keeps from being played if he can avoid, keeps from being hurt if he has other leads to the end of the road.

He's no fuck to give. That's the reason he sits in there, dirt on his soles, heart on his sleeve only when he reads. He leaves himself not knowing if he's swallowing up the words or the book itself is swallowing him whole.

It's sardonic and romantic, a little bit catartic, as the cold soda and ashes that Kenma tastes on his front teeth for having smoked a cheap cigarette before pulling himself into the plot, and it has its flaws. All books do. Kuro is just good enough at this not to make Kenma [alias The Reader] give them much thought with the skill of a man who turns over the world between his used fingers, as those who throw daggers expertly do.

 "Am I late?"

When Kuro talks about sand Kenma _feels_ the sand. Their stories are mostly crafted this way. "The poison is in her mouth."

Kuro stares at him, pondering like he sometimes gets, and calls out, "One vodka, please."

Kenma removes his eyes from the tasteful pages. "You wrote me in her."

"I write you in everyone, even if they've nothing to do with ya."

"That's not really fair to yourself."

He receives his glass and he gulps down a little bit, and as he glances over Kenma he's self-conscious and awfully resigned, he doesn't even need to spell a reply. He does anyway. "Don't talk about what's fair," it comes our as a – pleading. Not what Kenma is used to.

They assembled each other in one dizzy winter of high school, like most people find themselves, somehow, after having stayed side by side for so long. It all went in the dirt some time after that neither of them counted or care to remember. Now they're here, a little chapped and a little grey, existing in their own plotlines.

[Sometimes they tangle, along the way.]

"You look fine," Kenma has stopped asking how it goes a long time ago, maybe he never started.

Kuroo does compliments. "You too." And asks, he asks a lot. "Do you want to stay?"

Kenma shakes his head and puts away the book he found on display at the corner-bookstore somewhere nearby, a book he loves and loathes at the same time like the buildings he walks past down the rotten road.

He thinks, if his bones aren't being played with by the same man who spins everything else around like some grotesque carousel, it's because maybe Kuro has chosen not to. It would make Kenma laugh if he hadn't been around.

Numb fingers toy with the worn-out black scarf that Kenma did want to throw away. He was there, over the wide open trash can, he was ready. He chickened out. [Some things aren't meant to fade away, it's this simple.] He slowly glances up at Kuroo and _the lucky one_ flashes him what they both hope is a smile, yes, grown haggard from his trips and stubborn fidelty and late-twenties, and Kenma doesn't need to speak. He never needs to.

"It's okay. I don't see my manager until tomorrow, I can stay over at yours," Kuro reassures, always reassures over and over, as easily as he falls in love with things and stars and Kenma.

And Kenma doesn't blink, but he listens.

Their eyes are trained forward, as they fall into step nonchalantly next to each other under the ashen sky, moon low as a coin they could grasp and entrust their happiness to, if happiness they had. "I wish for something new sometimes," Kuro says.

He replies, "We're not that young and wild anymore." There's nothing more true, and Kenma swore that Kuro no longer laughed like that. His chest fills for five seconds and a half, then he looks down at the sidewalk, and the scarf around him is a warmth Kenma keeps forgetting every Monday morning, with the sharp coldness of ruffled sheets under his palm, beyond shut eyes, when he wishes that he was blind.

"You're the one. To me. You know that?" Kuro is always like that, always asking so many questions that don't really need an answer. "You'll always be." Such a writer.

Kenma walks a little faster. "...I know." His voice is small, windy. But his golden glassy eyes tell a different story than what their bound pages would, and that maybe hurts more than paper-cuts, but can also show beauty. Kenma's heart feels light and _existing_ as he looks at Kuro and he's willing to let it sink in until the morning rays irk his skin. He knows, love is good anyway. [Theirs too.] _"Though not always together?"_

Kuro's hand slides in his own, till it feels anchored, the heartbeat just a little below. _"It's okay, if not always together."_

The night has just begun.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (yes, the B.K. at the beginning is bokuto and he's a dj at a club because... because.)  
> I really hope you appreciated and I promise the next thing I upload will be more satisfying, ugghh
> 
> kudos/comments/any kind of feedback is always so much appreciated, and [here](http://pharadoxly.tumblr.com/) you have my tumblr if you want to drop by and say hello. or if you want to rant about haikyuu/kuroken that's more than okay too.  
> have a great day everyone!!


End file.
